Welcome to the Future

When traveling from Chicago to Springfield, MA, one has limited options where to stop for the night. There's Cleveland, which would've been fun if the Cavs were in the NBA Finals. There's Buffalo, which I can't imagine being too fun when the colleges are out of session. Then there's Erie, PA, featuring the Presque Isle Downs & Casino. The Road Warriors chose Erie, given that we were hungover, had already gone 450 miles or so, and love gambling.

After checking into a motel across the street, we walked over around 11:30pm, joining the massive crowd of 8 or 9 slot players, one waitress, one bartenders, and a couple drunks. We found the exact machine pictured above, and decided to give it a try, though Blackjack has never been as good to me as Hold 'Em or NFL betting.

So these machines are great, aside from the fact that they're certainly not helping the unemployment rate and may one day turn against humans Terminator-style. The virtual dealers rotate like real dealers, so we started with some smarmy jackass who was quickly replaced by an attractive Asian chick who busted about 85% of her hands, which is amazing. Then there were a couple of failed-stripper types, one of which hit a 7 card 21 and had all 3 of us at the table dropping the worst of 4-letter words. BUT YOU SEE, that's the beauty of it. Based on my time at other casinos, I'd say it's a safe bet that if you were to call an actual person the things we were calling (and flipping off) the machine on Sunday night, we'd get booted in a heartbeat. AND there's the fact that for once I actually made some money playing, when it seemed at first like a machine could easily be rigged to give the House better odds (though my neighbor assures me the Gaming Commission would never let that happen, I still have my doubts).

So automated robotics began "helping" our lives at the grocery store with express checkout, and now it's moved into the Casino realm. I'd like to predict the trend will next move into the education realm so that already underpaid teachers will become obsolete, followed by an eventual SkyNet takeover. I look forward to working 20 hour days at the behest of my lovely robot wife to save up for my robot kid's $50 million education at Syracuse.com.